Offshore wind farms, like this one near the English Channel, won't be coming to the waters near you (Image: phault)

There’s nothing quite like watching a government run against itself: after years of touting itself as the greenest government in North America, Dalton McGuinty’s Liberal government has spent the last three months running away from various parts of its clean energy program. Friday saw the latest and greatest example of this, as Queen’s Park used exciting, headline-grabbing news elsewhere in the world to distract from an announcement they’d rather not have made: Ontario is halting offshore wind projects in the Great Lakes until further study.

Tyler Hamilton, a clean energy columnist for the Toronto Star isn’t happy. He writes at his blog, Clean Break:

One project, to be developed by Windstream Energy, was actually offered a contract under the FIT program, while developer Trillium Power was quite advanced with its project development and preliminary studies and had worked hard to attract foreign manufacturers to Ontario. These companies and others must be furious, having invested millions of dollars already only to have the province do an about-face. I mean, is McGuinty admitting that the consultations and study done three years ago were bogus?

This sends a horrible message to the market. If the government can so easily backtrack on previous commitments, what’s next? What other projects will have their plugs pulled?

Green-minded voters looking for someone to blame for this—aside from the government, of course—can direct their ire toward Scarborough-Centre, the riding held by Energy Minister Brad Duguid and one of the hotspots for anti-wind activism in the province. (Toronto Hydro had been planning to build a wind farm several kilometers off the beach from the Scarborough Bluffs in the next-door riding of Scarborough-Southwest.) Offshore wind power in Ontario has had a pretty rough ride with the McGuinty government, having been jerked around with a moratorium in 2006 only to see the moratorium lifted in 2008 just months after McGuinty won his second majority.

Objections from NIMBYs concerned local citizens include that the spinning turbines create noise, strobe-like shadows and are a danger to wildlife—especially migratory birds. Fans of the turbines argue that offshore wind power is the largest renewable energy resource Ontario has, and that most people live and work within a manageable distance of the Great Lakes. For these proponents, the best-case scenario is that the same thing happens again, and the Liberals will just re-authorize offshore wind after the election if they win. Yes, optimism on this file amounts to hoping that Ontarians get jerked around a second time.

If the wind turbines are not adequate for Toronto then why would they be alright to be installed on the Oak Ridges Moraine?
The moraine supplies thousands of homes with clean water? Why would we dig it up to pour thousands of tonnes of concrete into it for industrialized wind turbines?
This gov’t really needs to think about what they are doing?

This is why: The Chinese are being polluted to death so that turbine parts can be made from the rare earth element neodymium, says the article. Researchers say 7 million tons a year of byproduct from mining and acid-based processing is being dumped near Baotou, creating a 5-mile wide man-made “tailing” lake of poisonous chemicals. Apparently, thousands of people have been sickened by the air and water, and this toxic waste now threatens a key waterway.

Do you still believe that wind turbines are “Green”?

Canada and the States shouldn’t be in such a yank to grow wind farms. Our push could be killing people in another part of the world and leading to contamination unlike anything we have ever seen. How about we STOP now and RE-THINK what is happening because of us.

Really?, you’re comparing what happens in China to Ontario? At least one of the projects on tap has attracted European manufactures to set up shop in Ontario, making it a NEW industry here that could hire many skilled former autoworkers, and inject millions into the economy.

You seriously think that a 5 mile tailing lake is going to pop up next to a steal mill in maybe Hamilton based on what’s happening in China? Really?

And as for studies, this government has had AMPLE time to look over the studies it’s paid for already in regards to off shore wind production on a project by project bassis, and it’s doing what many governments do, shelving the studies, and being short sighted for political gain. You can see that happen on all levels of government, go back to the 50’s even … remember the Avro Arrow? World leaders in aviation, right here in Ontario, one pen stroke and it was all gone! Short sighted! I don’t want to see the same thing happen again with yet another industry where we could become a beacon for the region, or country. We’re not China.

Industrial Wind Turbines are not like the small turbines people have with battery back-ups to get off the grid. The electricity isn’t stored and you can’t control the wind, so it needs to be paired with a form of generation that can be controlled. That’s why Ontario is building more gas plants and will need to continue building more.

Coal is not being phased out by wind. It being replaced by another fossil fuel: natural gas.

The price of natural gas has been kept artificially low by a process called “fracking” which has contaminated wells to the point that you can light up your kitchen tap. The process injects a mix of proprietary protected chemicals and water into the ground to break up the shale underneath. This water cannot be recovered. Quebec, now considering a ban, has reported that over half of the shale gas wells in the province are leaking and an unknown amount of natural gas emissions, most likely methane, is escaping into the atmosphere. Methane is over twenty times worse than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas.